Groups Urge Obama to Enact Media Reform
Posted December 18th, 2008 by Megan Tady
What do we want? Media reform. And when do we want it? Now. As in, now that we have a champion of media reform headed to the White House.
Along the campaign trail, in recent speeches, and in his technology agenda, President-elect Barack Obama has made big promises on media and technology issues. We finally have an opportunity to see real change in our media landscape – from diversity in our news to safeguarding Net Neutrality.
At any moment, Obama will announce his pick to lead the Federal Communications Commission, and we hope he chooses someone that shares his commitment to the public interest. Today, we sent a letter to Obama – signed by over 100 individuals and organizations, representing millions of people – urging him to choose a candidate who will embrace and enact the policy proposals he’s already outlined.
Some of the people and organizations who are stepping up to support the Obama media agenda include members of Pearl Jam, R.E.M., and My Morning Jacket as well as organizations like SEIU, NOW, DailyKos, the Hip Hop Caucus and hundreds more.
The letter includes six of Obama’s best quotes on media reform to remind him that his words have not fallen on deaf ears; we’ve been listening, and now we’re watching to make sure these promises aren’t hollow.
What did Obama say? Enough to bring a tear to the eye of any media reformer battered during the last administration. Here are the choicest sound bytes:
- Protecting an Open Internet: To “take a backseat to no one in my commitment to Net Neutrality” and “protect the Internet’s traditional openness to innovation and creativity and ensure that it remains a platform for free speech and innovation that will benefit consumers and our democracy.”
- Promoting Universal, Affordable Broadband: To see that “in the country that invented the Internet, every child should have the chance to get online” by bringing “true broadband to every community in America.”
- Diversifying Media Ownership: To create “the diverse media environment that federal law requires and the country deserves.”
- Renewing Public Media: To foster “the next generation of public media,” and “support the transition of existing public broadcasting entities and help renew their founding vision in the digital world.”
- Spurring Economic Growth: To “strengthen America’s competitiveness in the world” and leverage technology “to grow the economy, create jobs, and solve our country’s most pressing problems.”
- Ensuring Open Government: To reverse “policies that favor the few against the public interest,” close “the revolving door between government and industry,” and achieve “a new level of transparency, accountability and participation for America’s citizens.”
Obama has already made the call to create a more vibrant, diverse and democratic media system and to deliver the benefits of the open Internet and new technology to all Americans. Now he simply has to appoint someone at the FCC who will carry out his mandate.You can read the letter and add your name here.
I doubt that we are going to get big media reform anytime soon. I sat on a story about the NSA not doing background checks all last year, which is the biggest story I can think of. The NY Times ran off screaming the minute they heard NSA. The Washington Post still hasn’t recovered from the shock. The LA Times, FoxNews, NBC, 60 Minutes, and everybody else, had a cardiac at the thought of running a negative story about the NSA.
So I have to do a book now and promote it by buying clik ads, “Learn the Trtuh about the NSA”. If independent journalists would pick up the big stories from small and insignificant people, and circumvent the whole big media, the big media wouldn’t have the power it does over our lives.
I had to give back my cable box to Time Warner during the election because I couldn’t tolerate the brainwashing that interrupted the informative shows. Anderson Cooper got on Regis and Kelly’s show and said the same thing. He said he was watching Linsey Lohan’s family dominate his television, and then said “why am I wasting my valuable time watching this stuff?”.
You have to be much more open to the little people, like Studs Terkel. Stop walking away from legitimate stories just because the story happens to involve some insignificant person. I worked for Harvard attorneys for 20 years, and I thought they were bad until I met a few big media people. There is nothing worse than some egomaniac with a microphone or a newspaper at his disposal to use at his own whim.
Your entire job is to help people discern propaganda from truth and to put an end to the brainwashing.
January 6th, 2009 at 8:35 amOh why not leave a suggestion while I’m at it. It starts with individual action. Give back the cable box. I hate Time Warner, why on earth am I paying to watch it. And I don’t want one of those digital converters. I can read a book if I get bored.
If you want big media to disappear, you have to stop supporting it. It will catch on. People are brainwashed. All the brainwashing techniques were developed by big advertising. People are reacting to color, sounds, images, and carefully chosen phrases. Everybody is walking around like zombies, in case you didn’t notice.
You can’t even have a conversation with people in public without hearing some brainwashed feedback. They spit back the same phrases all day long. They are a complacent society willing to line up and do as they are told.
All you have to do is break the brainwashing with independent though, reckless as it sounds. Just be like Anderson Cooper, just tell it like it is and let it fly all over the place. Throw caution to the wind and just say it.
I was slapped with a restraining order last year for telling it like it is to the NSA. NSA can still kiss my petunias. As journalists, you have to get in their faces, not run around trying to please them.
January 6th, 2009 at 8:46 am